“It sucks that he did that to you.”

“I was consenting.” Cleo didn’t know why she kept excusing the situation with that. Consenting and unethical were two different things. Also, he could have cost Cleo her entire career. It was only true luck that she had called the nonprofit on the day that they were hiring and that the advocacy the job required stuck. Nobells couldn’t have anticipated that.

“Right, but, I mean, yeah, so what? That’s why we made the list. Well, not me, I didn’t make it. I carried around mace, so . . .” She trailed off, like mace could have prevented Cleo from showing up at Nobells’s apartment with a bottle of wine. But maybe what she meant, Cleo realized, was that she was already well prepared, aware of the fact that unexpected threats lurked in innocuous corners, even at an Ivy League law school. “But what I mean is that people don’t have to be, like, evil to be bad.” Arianna thought about this for a second. “Like, what he did was disgusting, and maybe what made it worse is that he wasn’t evil. It’s those guys, you know? Those are the ones you have to be more worried about, I think.”

Cleo thought of Jonathan Godwin. She did know. But she also thought of Matty and of Bowen, and she didn’t want Arianna to think that all men were the enemy.

“There are some good ones out there; don’t convince yourself that there aren’t.”

“Oh my God, I know!” Arianna squealed. “I mean, I love men.” Cleo remembered her flirtation with the aide from Senator Frost’s office. “But still . . . that doesn’t mean that they can’t be complete douchebags.”

Cleo laughed then because Arianna was indeed wiser than she had given her credit for. Certainly wiser than Cleo had been at twenty-four, and she was a new mother at that age and had graduated at the top of her class from Northwestern. She thought of Bowen and how you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Maybe she was guilty of that with a lot of people: Arianna, Bowen, even herself.

“Listen,” Cleo said, ready to start her day. “If you hear of any specifics, will you let me know? I worry that out here by myself, the story will turn into exactly what it wasn’t.”

“Oh yeah, for sure. Like the desperate twentysomething sex-starved woman who seduced her professor.” Arianna practically snorted, and Cleo didn’t know if she loved this young woman for her clear-eyed bravado or resented her for pinpointing exactly what half the country would say and repeating it back to her. “All I know, Senator McDougal, is that I got about a million Snaps from my friends last night—”

“Snaps?”

“Snapchat.”

“Oh, right.” Cleo should have known that. Lucas’s phone was constantly pinging.

“I got a million Snaps last night from my friends saying how lucky I was to work for you.”

“I really appreciate that, Arianna.” For the second time in their conversation, Cleo worried she might cry.

And never, in the history of her political career, had Cleo McDougal cried.

Cleo, awash in memories of a good man, remembered to order Matty that gift basket from the Alaskan fishery. She even wrote a silly note to accompany it: Matty—they say there are other fish in the sea, so I thought you might want to try this one, since I guess it’s clear that it’s not me.? Your friend, Cleo. Was it too much? She was about to ask Arianna if it was too much when Gaby blew in. Cleo hit Order and exited out of the page quickly before she could give it further thought. Across from her, Gaby plunked down in a chair and scowled.

“How was your weekend?” Cleo asked, as if there were nothing else to discuss. “How’s Oliver?”

Gaby steeled her jaw, threw her hair over her shoulder.

“He was, is, extremely sexy.” She glared at Cleo. That discussion was now over. “I’d ask you how your weekend went, but I saw the livestream.”

“Uh-huh,” Cleo said, because that was obvious.

“Why would you do that without me? Why would you not ask me first?”

“I didn’t want to be talked out of it.”

Gaby smacked her hand flat against Cleo’s desk. “Why would I have talked you out of it?” She pulled her hand back. “No, you’re right. I may have. This was reckless, Cleo, and you hired me to ensure that you don’t do reckless.”

“Have you met me, Gaby? I don’t do reckless! You were the one who told me to embrace my regrets.”

Gaby held up a finger, stopping her right there. “No, I told you to get me a list of ten—”

“And I did!”

“And then I was going to pick five—well, four after Seattle.” Gaby finished her sentence.

“Well, cross one more off your list. Now we’re down to three.” Cleo considered it. “No, two—I forgot the Jackman housing bill. You said we could count that.”

Gaby, fuming, just stared.

“What?” Cleo shot back. “This was what Veronica Kaye wanted. This was what you wanted.”

“Have you seen the news?” Gaby said. “It’s all they’re talking about!” She reached for her phone. Has Cleo McDougal Pushed the Women’s Movement Too Far?

“I thought the motto was ‘no press is bad press.’”

Gaby jumped to her feet. “If that’s your motto, then you haven’t been paying attention. Of course there is bad press! And this press . . . it’s not just bad for you; I mean, you literally handed the other side a loaded gun—”

Cleo was on her feet too. She was exhausted, yes, and a little battle-weary, but she wasn’t about to roll over and play dead just because Gaby wanted her to.

“Not literally—”

“You figuratively just handed all these men, well, and some women, a loaded gun! Spurned ex-lover shows up at the doorstep of her revered professor! Or worse—”

“There’s not a worse to that,” Cleo snapped.

“There is,” Gaby pressed. “Because half the talking heads are now wondering if you didn’t sleep your way to the top, if he didn’t call in favors for you.”

“Well, that is ridiculous,” Cleo screeched. “I barely sleep my way anywhere!”

Gaby nodded. “I could, of course, leak the sad details of your sex life, but I don’t think that would sway anyone.”

Cleo, still amped, yelled on top of her, “Arianna just seconds ago told me that her friends are cheering for me!”

“People can be cheering for you, Cleo, and also thinking you’re starting to lose your mind. Two things can be true at once.”

This was one of Gaby’s favorite sayings, as if Cleo weren’t aware that sometimes the universe presented dichotomies, both of which were justified. The responsible twenty-three-year-old who also slept with her married professor. She damn well understood that two things could be true at once. Tell her something she didn’t know, Gabrielle!

Cleo started to reply, but Gaby talked over her. “After MaryAnne, we needed to be cautious. This . . . this was the opposite of cautious.”

“You one hundred percent told me last week that we were all signals go on regrets.”

“Yeah, but I was talking about adopting a dog or . . . I don’t know, getting bangs!”

Cleo sank back in her chair, so Gaby did the same.

“A) I am not getting bangs—”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment suggestion,” Gaby conceded. “It was not a good one. Bangs wouldn’t suit you.”

Gaby sighed. Cleo sighed. Both of them knew that neither of them really came out on top when they argued. They were too evenly matched and also each too stubborn to really give up much ground. Also, this wasn’t the part of the romantic comedy where Kate Hudson started fighting with her best friend. It wasn’t even a romantic comedy, actually. Bowen Babson hadn’t even fucking kissed her.

“Also, there’s something else to consider, which really, honestly, Clee, I wish you’d come to me first.”

“What is it?” Cleo didn’t have any fight left in her either.

“This whole film-before-you-think culture, well, people are wondering if you made Nobells look guilty without giving him a chance to defend himself.”

Cleo felt the blood drain from her face. “He is guilty; he was guilty. I have emails! Bowen vetted it before we did anything!”

“We’ll see how that plays out, I guess. And I should say it’s not all terrible. A lot of it isn’t, actually. I’m running some internals, trying to see where your voters would come down. It seems like you’ve locked up women. The men, well . . .” Gaby flipped her hand at the implication. “Of course.”

“I’m not interested in internals, Gaby. This is my life, not a policy issue. I thought that was the point? I thought you wanted to make me look . . . less robotic; isn’t that what you said? Exploit my gumption, if I were to quote Veronica Kaye?”

“I just don’t want anyone calling you crazy.”

Cleo folded her hands underneath her chin. “Aren’t they going to call me crazy anyway? Isn’t that just what people do? To a young woman—”

“Youngish.”